Abstract

This thesis develops a notion of an archaeology of the voice that is situated between three principal areas of research and practice: oral history, locative media, and sound art.The research takes place in the context of contested urban space in Holbeck, Leeds one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the U.K. Through a reiterative and reflexive process of extensive interviewing, soundwalking and field recording the area is deep mapped and material gathered in order to produce a percipient led sitespecific presentation of oral history I term 'phonoscape'. Although the technology exists to connect oral history to place via locative media within a database aesthetic, a practical and conceptual gap is identified between these technologies for those working with audio interview material. In this context a purpose-built app is developed to enable oral history audio archives to be distributed geospatially, becoming navigable aurally on foot. In order to distribute a polyvocal sampling of an archive in time-space, techniques and principles from contemporary sound art are introduced, in particular a form of field composition involving an understanding of constitutive silence, soundscape, and voice editing techniques. Research into contemporary audio walk and memoryscape practice confirms that non-linear, fragmented narrative forms are used the construction of polyvocal understandings of place, and this is taken forward within a conception of the embodied hypertextual affordance of locative technology. The findings are then brought together in a transdisciplinary manoeuvre that introduces Displacement Activities, a translocational form of site-specific participatory performance art, providing a public vehicle that draws attention to phonoscape, its oral history content, and the archiveitself. As an open work that is generative and reflexive, Displacement Activities extend the notion of site-specificity, finding global analogues before returning to the original site to begin the work again.